Taming the email backlog
Listen to this lesson
Nigerian voice narration
Fictional training case. You return from two weeks' leave to 40 unanswered emails, three flagged urgent by the Director's office, and no idea where to start. This lesson teaches triage-first email management using AI to sort and draft replies in batches. Work through the example, identify the evidence needed and practise the method with cleared or synthetic inputs. Any additional figures in the explanation are separate practice examples, not claimed rows in a downloadable file.
Worked example
Kemi lists all 40 subject lines and sender roles (no email addresses) and asks AI to sort them into four groups: Reply today, Reply this week, Delegate, File only, with a one-line reason for each grouping. The three Director-flagged items land correctly in 'Reply today'. She then asks AI to draft one template reply covering the common theme among those urgent emails, which she personalises slightly for each recipient before sending — rather than writing three replies from scratch or, worse, answering all 40 emails in the order they arrived regardless of urgency.
The method
Paste only subject lines and sender roles — never full email addresses or message bodies with personal details — and ask AI to triage into named categories with justification. Group similar emails and request one template reply per group rather than per email. Always personalise a template before sending; an identical reply to different recipients can look careless.
Worked practice and common mistakes
A sender’s seniority alone does not establish a deadline. Compare urgency, consequence and who can act. A delegated email needs an owner and follow-up date, not merely a different folder. If subjects lack enough information, mark them for manual review. Personalise each reply and remove template promises that do not fit the particular case.
Review before using the result
Triage first so effort goes where urgency demands it, instead of replying in arrival order. Strip sender addresses before pasting a backlog into AI. One template reply per group saves time, but personalise each copy before it goes out.
Your workplace practice
Use the recommended free assistant with this lesson's fictional example. Sort these email subjects into: Reply today, Reply this week, Delegate, File only — with a one-line reason each. Then draft a template reply for the 'Reply today' group. Keep a copy of the input and draft. Compare the result with the verification steps above, record any correction, and retain placeholders where evidence is missing. The expected result is a checked draft for human review, not an automatically approved decision. Course examples and practice responses are fictional; amounts, dates, rules and thresholds are not official guidance or supplier quotations.
Open Google Gemini (free tier) and paste this prompt there. Drafts replies from cleared fictional email excerpts in free chat; paste the reviewed text into your mail app yourself.
Sort these email subjects into: Reply today, Reply this week, Delegate, File only — with a one-line reason each. Then draft a template reply for the 'Reply today' group.
Why this tool: Drafts replies from cleared fictional email excerpts in free chat; paste the reviewed text into your mail app yourself.
Hit a free limit? Switch to ChatGPT or Gemini and continue — the prompt works in any assistant.